There exists many patent documents and commercial products designed to clean the wax from the ear canal without damaging or irritating the ear canal. The most common is the cotton swab, referred to generically (and incorrectly) as a Q-tip. The cotton swab consists of a small wad of cotton wrapped around one or both ends of a short rod or shaft, usually made of either wood, rolled paper, or plastic. However use of the cotton swab is the most common cause of eardrum punctures, and not recommended due to the limitations of the design at removing wax and debris.
The cotton swab works well to remove water and some particulates from the ear canal but is limited in its design at removing earwax and debris. The smooth tip of the cotton swab cannot suck, scrape, or cut earwax and debris from the ear canal, instead it smears and pushes wax deeper inside the ear canal without removing the wax from the surface of the ear canal. Lastly, cotton swabs can result in injury to the ear drum due to the need to press and dig inside the ear canal in an attempt order to gather earwax and debris from the ear canal.
Sittler EP 0875221 describes a device insertable into an ear canal that is used to scrape wax and debris from the ear canal without injuring the ear canal and ear drum when rotated inside the ear canal. The device composes of a shaft with a bulbous shape at both tips of the shaft, and a plurality of blades or strands that extend axially out from the shaft in same axial direction of the shaft. The blades are used to scrape the wax from the ear canal when rotated inside the ear canal. The device is manufactured in several steps. The first step involves injection molding the shaft and injection molding the strands. The next step involves joining the strands to the blade by welding them and shaping them to the bulbous ends, then cutting the excess material from the tips of the strands. This process involves several steps and requires expensive equipment in addition to the injection mold. The automation of such a process is not easy and results in a tooling cost, staff and relatively high maintenance. Moreover because of the sequence of steps involved, the manufacturing time unit is relatively long, which further increases the manufacturing cost and the cost to the consumer.
Serra WO 96/37172 describes a device insertable into an ear canal that is used to scrape wax and debris from the ear canal without injuring the ear canal and ear drum when rotated inside the ear canal. The device composes of an elongated shaft and a plurality of blades or strands that extend axially out from the shaft in same axial direction of the shaft. The distal ends of the tips of the device have various shapes including an ovoid and rounded shapes. One problem with Serra device is that Serra teaches a device that comprises of a rounded and or ovoid shaped tip that may push wax deeper into the ear canal. Since a rounded tip is flat at its axis, it will push wax further inside the ear canal causing wax impactation. Oval shaped tips can damage the ear drum if they are too acute. Furthermore, Serra discloses a device with helical and parallel blade orientations. Since the ear canal is a tubular shape, cut geometry teaches that the entire surface of a blade must intersect to the surface of the ear canal at an angle ranging from 0 to 45 degrees to scrape and cut an optimal amount of earwax and debris from the surface of the ear canal. While I believe an optimal amount of earwax and debris is scraped and cut from the surface of the ear canal when the entire blade intersects the entire surface of the ear canal, I don't wish to be bound by this. Nonperpendicular orientations therefore do not scrape or cut an optimal amount of earwax and debris from the surface of the ear canal since the entire surface of the blade does not intersect the surface of the ear canal. Although Serra proposes a parallel blade orientation, a parallel blade orientation does not remove an optimal amount of earwax and debris from the ear canal since there no curvature mechanism to gather the earwax and debris as it is scraped from the surface of the ear canal so earwax and debris escapes from the tips of the blades as the device is rotated inside the ear canal.
Coe AU 2013100584 describes another orientation of a device insertable into an ear canal that is used to scrape wax and debris from the ear canal without injuring the ear canal and ear drum when rotated inside the ear canal. The device composes of an elongated shaft and four blades that are extended orthogonally from the shaft. The orientation of the blades are described as crosses with a lip-like projection forming the end of the blades. In other words, when viewed from a cross-sectional viewpoint, the blades appear like four straight perpendicular intersecting lines with a curve at the distal ends of each of the four straight lines. One limitation to Coes device is that blades that do not curve from the base of the shaft which will require the user to use greater rotational force due to friction generated by the earwax and debris as it impacts the wall of the straight stem orientation of the blades. Further, Coe does not disclose the arc radian of the lip-like projections extending from the tips of the blades. If the lip-like projections are too obtuse, greater than 50 degrees, earwax and debris will escape the edges of the lip-like projections when the device is rotated inside the ear canal and therefore will not be gathered by blades. If the lip-like projections are too acute, less than 20 degrees, earwax and debris will be pushed longitudinally inside the ear canal by the outer surface of the lip-like projections and therefore will not gather the earwax and debris. Further, if the lip-like projections are too acute, the edges of the lip-like projections will not scrape, cut and gather an optimal amount of earwax and debris from surface of the ear canal because the edges of the blades will be at a negative degree or angle to the surface of the ear canal and therefore earwax and debris will glide over the outer surface of the blade as it is rotated inside the ear canal. Furthermore, Coe does not discuss the criticality of the edges of the blades to the outcome of cutting and scraping earwax and debris from surface of the ear canal. If the edges of the blades are too obtuse, greater than 7 degrees the edges will be too obtuse and will require greater rotational force to cut through the earwax and debris because friction will generate between the obtuse edge and the earwax and debris.